<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post"> "There is no way you can go back in time," Olajuwon said in a telephone interview from Jordan, where he is studying Arabic. "After the fact, now they have the list of organizations that are banned by the government." A Treasury Department spokeswoman, Molly Millerwise, declined to discuss Olajuwon's contributions but said, "In many cases donors are being unwittingly misled by the charities." Federal law enforcement officials said they were not investigating Olajuwon, a 7-foot center born in Nigeria who played 17 seasons for the NBA's Houston Rockets before retiring in 2002. Olajuwon, who became a U.S. citizen in 1993, was known as "The Dream" and won the NBA's Most Valuable Player award in 1994, when he led the Rockets to the first of back-to-back championships. The Olajuwon-founded Islamic Da'Wah Center gave more than $60,000 in 2000 and $20,000 in 2002 to the Islamic African Relief Agency, the center's tax records show. The government shut down the relief agency in October, saying it gave money and other support to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. But the agency and its possible ties to terrorism had been in news stories years earlier, before Olajuwon's contributions: The U.S. Agency for International Development cut off two government grants to the Islamic African Relief Agency in 1999, saying funding the group "would not be in the national interest of the United States." A former fund-raiser for the relief agency, Ziyad Khaleel, was named in a federal trial in 2001 as the man who bought a satellite telephone that bin Laden used to plan the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.</div> Source
Just because the charity focuses on Islamic Africans, there HAS to be a tie to terrorists? I don't believe this stupid BS!!! Why is it that Christians preach forgiveness yet it seems to be the most judgmental and merciless religion in the real world? That being said, this thread doesn't really have any relevance to basketball other than the fact the organisation was founded by Olajuwon.
They have proof that this org has ties with hamas and al quieda and i cant believe his own mosque and anything inside houston would do that. but dream donating to terrorists? he definetly had no idea.
Darn, this definitely has tarnished the image of Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon. I'm running out of role models. I hope Yao or Tmac know how to handle things outside of basketball
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting drm2dnk:</div><div class="quote_post">Darn, this definitely has tarnished the image of Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon. I'm running out of role models. I hope Yao or Tmac know how to handle things outside of basketball</div> Cmon you cant believe this nonsense. This is NOT gonna tarnish his image, maybe for now but when ppl say Hakeem Olajuwon theyre not gonna think of terrorism theyre gonna think of the Houston Rockets, greatest shot blocker in nba history, mvp, champion, phi slamma jamma and many more things. <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Retired basketball star Hakeem Olajuwon says his mosque's donations to groups the government later determined to be terrorist fronts were meant to help the poor, not sponsor terrorism.</div> That sounds like something Hakeem would do, donate to the poor. He can still be your role model.
I don't see how anyone can really fault Olajuwon for this. He believed that the organization he was donating money to would distribute it to aid the poor. And remember, this was back before 9/11 when it wasn't these terrorist connections weren't well documented and nor was it something looming large in people's minds. Also, is there actual solid proof that the money he donated went to terrorists? I believe the government is claiming that the organization he donated money to was just a front for some other organization in Sudan which is supporting Bin Laden. Actual details about the relationship between these organizatons and Bin Laden and how donation flow from one to the other hasn't been made very clear.
